Those Places Thursday (April 10, 2014) -- Russia

With all the recent news about Russia and Ukraine and the take-over of the Crimea, it made me recall a week-long trip I took to Russia in 2006 (St. Petersburg and Moscow only) with a friend.  It was definitely a different experience as these photos will illustrate.

The high goose-stepping young soldier above is part of a changing of the guard ceremony at a memorial to war dead in the shadow of the Kremlin wall (which can be seen in the background).

This photo is interesting. In view of the news reports of a resurgent interest in the Soviet Union in Russia and especially in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine as shown by the flying of the old Soviet flag and the playing of Soviet music, I remembered that the elderly couple in this picture were playing patriotic Soviet music full blast on the boom box the man is holding. They were in the porch entry to a building just outside Red Square and the open arch and brick made the music echo and sound even more strident.  The couple was largely ignored then, but I am not so sure it would be the same today.

This is a huge Eastern Orthodox church in Moscow within easy walking distance of the Kremlin and Red Square. I'm not sure if there is anything allegorical in the story of this cathedral given past history and recent news, but it sure made me think.

The church above is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.  It is 338 feet high and is the tallest Orthodox Christian church in the world. It was originally built in the 1800s and it took 40 years to complete.  Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture premiered in the cathedral in 1882.  

In 1931, Joseph Stalin completely destroyed the cathedral in order to make way for a stupendous structure to be known as the Palace of the Soviets.  The Palace was never built and instead a gigantic open-air swimming pool was constructed in its place. Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the pool was destroyed and cathedral was completely re-built in the 1990s to duplicate the original cathedral on the original site.  Pictured above is the second coming of the cathedral and it was largely funded by donations to a construction fund by over 1 million Russians.

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Photographs by the author (November 2006).

For more information about the Cathedral of Christ the Savior see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour. For more about the story of the cathedral, historic photos of the original building, the swimming pool and the conception for the Palace of the Soviets, see http://io9.com/5981106/the-strange-history-of-the-moscow-cathedral-that-couldnt-be-destroyed 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (March 13, 2014) -- Mt. Colvin in the Adirondacks

Molly on Mt. Colvin (August 29, 1976)

John on Mt. Colvin (August 29, 1976)

I have written a few times about the importance of the Adirondacks in upstate New York to our family. After visits to the region in his youth and then years of fly fishing in the area while dropping off his daughter Kathy for her summer counselor job at Eagle Island Girl Scout Camp in Saranac Lake, Molly's father and mother bought a "camp" right on Lake Placid.  The family enjoyed at least three decades of regular visits to "Placid Place" in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. Molly and I spent our honeymoon at the camp, and later our sons learned to swim in the lake. When they were older, our sons and their cousins and friends attended several weeks of soccer camps at North Country School in Lake Placid. In many ways ours sons grew up with Lake Placid and the Adirondacks as a central part of their infancy through their early adulthood. We have all hiked, climbed, canoed, backpacked, and swum extensively in the region.  In August 1998 our immediate family embarked on a continuous backpacking trek of the entire 133-mile Northville-Lake Placid Trail.

There are forty-six peaks in the Adirondacks that are over 4,000 ft. elevation (above sea level) and a climbing fraternity known as the Adirondack Forty-Sixers or simply the "Forty-Sixers" exists for those who can establish that they have climbed all of them. In August 1976, during our honeymoon week, Molly and I climbed our first Forty-Sixer peak as shown above -- 4057 ft. Mt. Colvin.

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As a reminder, "camp" is the Adirondack term that elsewhere would be called a cottage or cabin.  If the camp is particularly old, large, and luxurious it is referred to in the Adirondacks as a "Great Camp" and is usually associated in some fashion with the rich and famous of days past.

Photographs from the personal collection of the author.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (February 20, 2014) -- Christ Church in Lonsdale, Rhode Island

Christ Church in Lonsdale, Rhode Island was founded in 1833. At the time, Lonsdale was part of the town of Smithfield, but it is now part of Lincoln, Rhode Island. Episcopalians who worked in the mills in Lonsdale originally began meeting and holding services in the village schoolhouse, but in January 1834 they formally organized into the parish of Christ Church and later that same year they were accepted into the Diocesan Convention.

The majority of the members of Christ Church were employed by the Lonsdale Company and so in 1835 the company donated $2,000 to a building fund and contributed land where a new church could be built. The church was completed in 1835 and it has been a part of the greater Lonsdale community ever since. The original church burned down in 1883, but the Lonsdale Company almost immediately rebuilt the church for the parish.  It was larger than the original church and was located on the same site. The new church was completed in 1884. The undated antique postcard shown above is of the rebuilt church post-1884.

Generations of my family have been associated with Christ Church in Lonsdale. I was baptized at Christ Church on April 27, 1952.  My mother was baptized at Christ Church on September 9, 1928. My grandparents, Everett S. Carpenter and Ruth E. (Cooke) Carpenter, were married at Christ Church on Saturday, September 18, 1926. Both of my grandparents were baptized at Christ Church. My grandfather was baptized at Christ Church in 1891 and he was confirmed in the church on Maundy Thursday, 1907. My great grandfather, Samuel Eber Carpenter, was president of the Young Men's Parish Club of Christ Church for seventeen years and was a senior warden of the church.

Christ Church in Lonsdale (Sept. 2005)

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Photographs by the author -- September 2005.

Postcard source unknown.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (February 13, 2014) --The Fillmore East

The Fillmore East was a legendary music concert venue in Manhattan from March 1968 to June 1971. It was a theater that sat about 2,700 people and served as the east coast sibling to the San Francisco music venue of rock promoter Bill Graham known as the Fillmore Auditorium (later "Fillmore West"). The Manhattan venue was originally (1925 - 26) a Yiddish theater called the Commodore Theater and later became the Loews Commodore movie theater when Loews Inc. took it over.  It had fallen into serious disrepair when Bill Graham acquired the building in 1967.

Graham turned the former movie theater into a premier venue for rock & roll acts and it became known as "The Church of Rock and Roll." For the three years of its existence, Fillmore East showcased almost all of the famous rock acts of the time.  The Grateful Dead were regulars and groups such the The Beach Boys, the Allman Brothers Band, Crosby Still Nash and Young, Led Zeppelin, The Byrds, Sha Na Na, and numerous others played there. There is a long list of rock albums that had some or all of their songs recorded live at Fillmore East.

I was an undergraduate and graduate student at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey for much of the 1970s and since Manhattan was a short train or bus ride from New Brunswick, I attended several rock concerts in New York over the years. I went to shows at Fillmore East on at least two occasions that I can recall.

The first time I went to Fillmore East was in October, 1970.  John Mayall, It's A Beautiful Day, and Flock played as shown in the program pages immediately below.

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Photographs of the Fillmore East program for October 9 - 10 , 1970 from the original program in the collection of the author.

For more information about Fillmore East and a photo gallery, see the website of the Fillmore East Preservation Society at http://www.fillmore-east.com  and the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillmore_East

For more information about John Mayall, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mayall

For more information about It's A Beautiful Day, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Beautiful_Day

For more information about Flock, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flock_(band) 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (February 6, 2014) -- NOACs

The Participant Patch for the 2000 NOAC

To medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry, NOACs are "New Oral Anticoagulants" used in treating certain kinds of heart disease or anomalies. For members of the Boy Scouts of America, however, NOACs are the National Order of the Arrow Conferences that occur about every two years.

The Order of the Arrow or "OA" has been described as the "national honor society" of the Boy Scouts of America. It was founded in 1915 by Dr. E. Urner Goodman and Carroll A. Edson at the Treasure Island Camp of the Philadelphia Council.  The camp was located on two islands in the Delaware River between Point Pleasant, PA and Frenchtown, NJ.

The Order is built around themes and traditions of the American Indian and members of the Order are known as Brothers or Arrowmen. Somewhat unusually, membership in the Order is based on selection by other Scouts who are most often not themselves members of the Order of the Arrow.  Selection is based on an election where members of a Troop annually select those Scouts in their troop that they believe best exemplify the ideals and goals of Scouting. Eligible youth must have attained the rank of at least First Class and have a certain level of camping experience.

Once Scouts are nominated for membership via an election, they then attend an Ordeal weekend following their call-out at a ceremony during summer camp or at a district-wide camporee. The Ordeal is set up to safely test a candidate's commitment to service and self-sacrifice.  Candidates participate in a welcoming campfire ceremony conducted by youth members in Indian garb.  The ceremony emphasizes the meaning and goals of the Order and "service to others." Candidates who wish to become members then take a vow of silence and agree to spend a day of "arduous labor" doing camp improvements and other service projects. They also agree to receive little food during the day of the Ordeal.  Once they agree, they are led into the woods to spend the night alone with no shelter before rising early the next day to begin silent service to others through their labors.

There are more than 180,000 youth and adult members of the Order of the Arrow today and they represent about one-seventh of the total membership of the Boy Scouts. Since 1953 there have been no honorary memberships bestowed in the Order. [Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were two honorary members before such memberships were ceased.] There are no "ranks" within the Order, but there are three levels of "honor": Ordeal; Brotherhood; and Vigil. Our sons and I are members of the Order of the Arrow. Both sons were youth members of the ceremonies teams and our younger son was a member of a ceremony competition team that competed at the National Order of the Arrow Conferences in 2000 and 2002.

A National Order of the Arrow Conference or NOAC is a multi-day event that almost always takes place on the campus of a large university during the school's summer recess.  Thousands of Arrowmen from OA lodges around the country participate in these events to attend leadership courses, engage in sports competitions, ceremonial competitions, Indian dances, Indian culture courses, patch trading, and fellowship.  The first actual NOAC was held in 1948 at Indiana University.  Since then there have been thirty-one NOACs at universities such as Michigan State, Iowa State, Colorado State, Rutgers, Purdue, U. of Texas (Austin), U. of California (Santa Barbara), the Universities of Wyoming, Kansas, Illinois, and Nebraska among others.  The next NOAC will be held in 2015 at Michigan State University. Indiana University has hosted ten NOACs thus far, the most of any university.

Each NOAC has a theme that is based on concepts and quotes from the Order of the Arrow ceremonies.  Participant patches, neckerchiefs and other items display the theme for the NOAC as shown in the items depicted in this post.

Official neckerchief for the 2000 NOAC

In 2000, our younger son and I attended the NOAC held at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) as delegate members of a contingent from Amangamek Wipit Lodge 470, of the National Capital Area Council.  It was the third time a NOAC had been held at UT Knoxville. The others were in 1977 and 1992.

The special combined pocket patch and 'hanger" for
Amangamek Wipit Lodge 470 delegates to the 2000 NOAC

In 2002 our younger son also attended the NOAC held at Indiana University.

The Participant Patch for the 2002 NOAC 

  

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Photographs by the author of items in the author's personal collection. 

For more information about the Order of the Arrow see, http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/OrderoftheArrow.aspx and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Arrow

For more information about NOACs, see, http://history.oa-bsa.org/node/3202

For a list of all the NOACs and other Order of the Arrow national events, see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Order_of_the_Arrow_national_events
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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew
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Those Places Thursday (January 30, 2014) -- Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, New Mexico

Philmont Base Camp and Tent City seen from Tooth of Time Ridge

At roughly 138,000 acres, Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico is the largest youth camp in the world as measured by land mass. It is also a jewel among the high adventure bases of the Boy Scouts of America. The ranch is approximately 30 miles in length from north to south and about 12 miles in width from west to east at its widest point. All of Philmont is more than a mile above sea level (ASL). The lowest point on the ranch is 6,500 ft. ASL and the highest point is Baldy Mountain at 12,441 ft. ASL. Much of the interior of the ranch is mountainous (as depicted below), while the eastern and southern sections have no mountains. There is a fairly small area in the eastern part that is prairie.

Baldy Mountain at 12, 441 ft. above sea level is the highest point on Philmont Scout Ranch.

On the very cool and windy summit of Baldy Mountain (July 2004)

Topography and geology of Philmont Scout Ranch

Each summer from early June through late August a total of about 23,000 Scouts and adult "Scouters" arrive at Philmont to go on ten-day backpacking treks of 50 miles or more in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the ranch.  A seasonal staff of some 1,250 run the base camp facilities as well as certain backcountry camps where a variety of adventures and skills such as fly fishing, rock climbing, black powder shooting, archery, panning for gold, etc., can be experienced.

Near the summit of Mt. Phillips at Philmont.

Like National Jamborees, Philmont Scout Ranch backpacking treks have played an important part in our family history.  I first went to a high adventure trek at Philmont in 1967 when I was 15 years old and a member of Troop 59 in Cinnaminson, New Jersey. In 1999, when our older son was 15 years old, he and I went to Philmont as part of a crew from our home troop (Troop 961 chartered in Hillsboro, Virginia). I have been to Philmont for two other high adventure treks.  One was as a Crew Advisor in 2002 and my last trek was as a male Advisor with a co-ed crew of Venture Scouts in 2004. I have hiked more than 200 miles of Philmont's trails and peaks since 1967.  

The Philmont crews from Burlington County, New Jersey (July 18, 1967).  I am in the top row, ninth from the left.

The Philmont crews from Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Virginia (July 26, 1999).  I am in the top row second from the left.  Our older son is in the middle row fifth from the left.

The traditional Philmont Scout Ranch neckerchief.

The coveted Philmont "Arrowhead patch" awarded only to those who
complete their trek and perform conservation service hours on the trail.

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Photographs taken by the author except group crew photos.  All are in the personal collection of the author.

Topography and geology graphic of Philmont from the author's personal copy of "The Philmont Field Guide" (1985).

For more on the history of Philmont Scout Ranch see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philmont_Scout_Ranch

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (January 23, 2014) -- Simpson's-in-the-Strand, London, England 1955

My late father-in-law was a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was competitively selected for a Fulbright Scholarship under the Scholar Grant program to lecture and/or conduct research at Oxford for a year.  In 1955 - 1956 he, his wife and three children (including my wife Molly) moved to Oxford, England for a year.

During their year abroad, my wife's family took the opportunity to tour England, Ireland and some countries on the continent.  My mother-in-law kept up a regular correspondence with family back home including her parents who lived in Toronto, Canada. Her parents kept the correspondence from their daughter and things like hand-drawn "thank you" notes sent from England by their grandchildren.  These documents were later returned to my mother-in-law and are now available to her children and her grandchildren (our sons).

In September 1955, receptions were held in London for the Fulbright scholars studying in England at the time.  My wife's parents attended, of course, and surely welcomed the getaway to London without the three children (who were 3, 4 and 7 years old). During their getaway, Molly's parents followed up on a suggestion from her mother's father (Dr. G. Douglas Jeffs of Toronto) to try a restaurant called "Simpson's." It was a good suggestion and, on September 26, 1955, Molly's mother sent the above post card back to her father in Toronto  reporting on the results of his suggestion.

The back of the post card from Molly's mother to her father reads as follows. . . 

                                                                                                            Sept. 26, 1955

               At your suggestion we tried Simpson's while Dan & I

               were in London, alone, for the Fulbright receptions.

               It's still good! A huge plate of wonderful roast beef.

               Be sure to put it on your list of places to eat.

                                                                 Love to all,

                                                                 D______

             

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Photograph of the original post card in the family collection.

For more information about the Fulbright Program, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulbright_Program

For more interesting information about Simpson's-in-the-Strand traditional English restaurant and its history, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's-in-the-Strand. One of the restaurant's most famous mentions is in the 1961 film "The Guns of Navarone," which obviously could not have influenced Molly's parents' choices in 1955.  In the film, David Niven's character tells his wounded comrade that he is sure to recover from his injury and they will return to London and go straight away to Simpson's and have roast beef! Simpson's is still in business today and its specialty is aged Scottish beef on the bone -- which further explains the front of the post card above. 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (January 16, 2014) -- National Jamborees, Boy Scouts of America

In 1969 I was a Boy Scout and that summer I attended the Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree held at Farragut State Park outside Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  National Jamborees are held by the BSA about once every four years.  The 1969 Jamboree was the first of five National Jamborees that I have attended.  The other four I attended as an adult and I served in various capacities including as a Jamboree Troop 1st Assistant Scoutmaster, as a Jamboree Troop Scoutmaster, as a member of the Northeast Regional Staff (Action Alley), and, during the 100th BSA Anniversary Jamboree in 2010, as a member of the Jamboree Security Staff.  Both of our sons are Eagle Scouts.  One attended the 1997 Jamboree as a youth participant and the other attended the 2001 Jamboree as a youth participant.  National Jamborees are part of our family history.

The 1969 National Jamboree was actually held five years after the previous Jamboree held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1964.  The 1969 National Jamboree was delayed for a year because in 1967 the Boy Scouts of America hosted the World Jamboree for the first time and the World Jamboree was held at Farragut State Park. 

The Boy Scouts of America have held eighteen* National Jamborees as of the one held the summer of 2013.  The first Jamboree was to have been held in Washington, DC in August 1935, but it had to be canceled due to a polio epidemic. The first BSA National Jamboree to actually take place was held on the Mall in Washington, DC in 1937 with 27,238 youth and adult participants from around the country. 

A Jamboree usually lasts for seven days as it did in 1953, 1957, 1960, 1964, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1993; but in 1937, 1950, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2013 the Jamborees were ten days long.  Over the years, National Jamborees have been held in eight different locations in the country: Washington, DC (1937); Valley Forge, PA (1950, 1957 and 1964); Irvine Ranch, CA ( 1953); Colorado Springs, CO (1960); Farragut State Park, ID (1969 and 1973*); Moraine State Park, PA (1973* and 1977); Fort A.P. Hill, VA (1981, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2010); and, most recently, at the new BSA-owned "Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve - The Summit" in WV. Now that the BSA owns and controls 10,600 acres in West Virginia, The Summit will become the permanent home for all future National Jamborees. 

National Jamborees have always attracted tens of thousands of participants (youth and adult) from around the U.S. and some foreign countries.  The smallest of the National Jamborees was in 1937 at 27, 238 participants, but the Jamborees in 1977 and 1981 were not much larger at 28,601, and 29,765 participants respectively.  Setting aside the unique East/West Jamborees of 1973, which had a combined total of 73,610 participants, the largest single Jamboree is still the one held at Colorado Springs in 1960 with 56,377 participants.  The largest National Jamboree in the last 48 years has been the 2010 Jamboree, which was held in the year of the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Boy Scouts of America and had 43,434 participants.  That made the 100th Anniversary Jamboree the sixth largest Jamboree after 1960 (56,377), 1957 (52,580), 1964 (50,960), 1950 (47,163), and 1953 (45,401). 

As a youth participant at the 1969 National Jamboree, I was a member of a temporary "expeditionary Troop" formed from registered Scouts in Burlington County, NJ where my family lived at the time. Our Jamboree Troop #26 (pictured at the top of this post) was comprised of four "patrols" and I was the Patrol Leader for one of them -- the "Unami" patrol. Our patrol totem is hanging second from the left on the Troop's gateway in the photo above.

The shape of our patrol totem is a turtle because the area that became Burlington County, New Jersey was a small part of the ancestral home of the Lenape (lun-NAH-pay) people who were later called the  "Delaware" by the English. The Lenape were separated into three main sub-tribes: the Minsi symbolized by the Wolf; the Unami symbolized by the Turtle; and the Unalachtigo symbolized by the Turkey. The founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, William Penn, made his 1682 peace and land purchase treaty ("Penn's Treaty") with the Unami and the Unalachtigo peoples. Since the Unami lived in the areas bordering both sides of the Delaware River where the Philadelphia environs and Burlington County are now located, we decided to name our patrol the Unami.

The participant patch for the BSA's 1969 National Jamboree

The participant patches for (left to right top to bottom) the BSA's 2010, 2005, 2001 and 1997 National Jamborees

Oh, in the event you are trying to find me in the Troop 26 photograph above, I am the one kneeling at the far right in the second row. So young, such hair . . .

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* Purists will sometimes argue that there have actually only been seventeen truly "National" Jamborees because in 1973 the Jamboree was actually split between two locations -- one in the east (Moraine State Park, PA) and one in the west (Farragut State Park, ID) -- AND they were not even held simultaneously because the western location started on August 1, 1973 and the eastern location started two days later on August 3, 1973.  The 1973 Jamboree is unique, thus far, because all other Jamborees have occurred at a single location.

  

Original photograph in the personal collection of the author.

The image of the 1771-72 Benjamin West painting of William Penn's treaty with the Indians is from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.  The work is in the public domain because it was published or registered before January 1, 1923. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Treaty_of_Penn_with_Indians_by_Benjamin_West.jpg 

Images of the Jamboree participant "patches" for the 1969, 2010, 2005, 2001 and 1997 National Jamborees made from original patches in the personal collection of the author.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Those Places or "Travel Thursday" (January 9, 2014) -- St. Petersburg, Russia

The former Winter Palace now The Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Russia
 as seen from across the Neva River (November 2006)

As Geneabloggers informs us, today* is the anniversary of the 1905 "St. Petersburg Massacre" in Russia. In January 1905 demonstrators marched to what was then the Winter Palace to present a petition to Czar Nicholas II.  Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators not at the palace itself in Palace Square, but rather as they approached the palace from various points in the city center. Both sides disputed how many people were killed or injured during the shootings, but today most estimates agree that about 1,000 were either killed or wounded from shots and from being trampled by the panicked and fleeing crowd of demonstrators. The utter disregard for the ordinary people who were killed and injured simply trying to present a petition to the Czar shocked and angered the country and a strike spread throughout Russia.  Over 400,000 people refused to work during January 1905 and when the movement persisted authorities eventually shot or hanged 15,000 peasants and workers, injured another 20,000 and sent 45,000 into exile. It is generally considered that the massacre of Bloody Sunday and the disaster of World War I for Russians led to the Russian Revolution of 1917 -- which began in St. Petersburg on October 25, 1917 (Old Style calendar, November 7th New Style calendar) with a blank shot signal fired from the cruiser Aurora to announce the storming of the Winter Palace. 

The cruiser Aurora docked in St. Petersburg (November 2006)

In November 2006, a friend and I took a quick trip to Russia when excellent airfare rates suddenly presented themselves.  We flew into Moscow on Delta Airline and then on a Russian domestic plane to St. Petersburg. Our arrival in Russia was significantly impacted by flight delays and cancellations getting out of the U.S. and so our planned two days in St. Petersburg was trimmed down to one very long and jam-packed day. We then took a late overnight train back to Moscow where we spent a few days before flying home. The night train looked almost brand new and the sleeper compartment and service were excellent.  We were awoken with a tray of hot tea and a light breakfast of some biscuits and fruit just before we pulled into the Moscow train station!

Because our time in St. Petersburg was cut in half from what we had planned, our itinerary was quickly adjusted with the driver and tour guide we hired prior to arriving. The cost for the driver and guide was amazingly inexpensive and proved to be well worth the expense in any event. Our guide, Tatiana, was a Ph.D. engineer who had to support her pensioned elderly parents.  She told us that since the fall of the USSR, she could make more money doing tour guiding than she could in her former position with the government and the pension her parents had was entirely inadequate for them to attempt to live on alone.  Tatiana spoke excellent English and was very knowledgable about the city and its history. She and the driver, Yevgeni, took us to local restaurants, places to do some shopping, to a Russian folk dancing and singing show, and to various historic sites in the city.  In addition to seeing the site where Rasputin was killed, St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the cabin of Peter the Great, the cruiser Aurora where the start of the October Revolution was signaled with a blank shot, and other sites, we spent several hours at The Hermitage museum (pictured at the top of this post), which is the old Winter Palace -- the destination of demonstrators on Bloody Sunday 1905.

The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood (Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ) built on the site of the assassination of Czar Alexander II by terrorists.  It is considered St. Petersburg's answer to Moscow's famous and ornate St. Basil's Cathedral, which sits in Red Square. 

St. Petersburg is a beautiful city built on some 100 islands nestled within canals in the Neva River delta on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Finland (Baltic Sea).  There are 342 bridges in St. Petersburg and it is not surprising that the city is often called "The Venice of the North." The founder of the city was Peter the Great and he named the city in honor of St. Peter, but the city's name has changed many times.  From 1703 until 1914 it was known as St. Petersburg ("The City of St. Peter").  In 1914 the name was changed to Petrograd and then in 1924 it was renamed in honor of Vladimir Lenin and it was  known as Leningrad until the fall of the Soviet Union when it returned to the name St. Petersburg in 1991. St. Petersburg is the most northern city in the world with a population of over 1 million (5 million as of 2012). St. Petersburg, Florida was named in honor of the Russian city by Piotr Dementyev (Peter Demens), a Russian-born railroad builder in the U.S. 

  

Aerial view of St. Petersburg, Russia -- "The Venice of the North" -- looking at The Hermitage museum (the former Winter Palace) top center below the water and then across the water to the Peter and Paul Fortress. 

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All photographs by the author (November 2006) except the aerial view of the city, which is from http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/introduction and you are encouraged to visit that website if you are ever contemplating a trip to St. Petersburg, Russia.

* Actually, today is the anniversary under the "Old Style" Julian calendar.  Under the "New Style" Gregorian calendar the anniversary date is January 22 -- so if you follow any links to the anniversary today you might be confused if you see the site stating the anniversary of the massacre is January 22nd and not today -- January 9th.  For a reminder of how calendar dates for historical events and milestones in our genealogies can be different than we expect if the calendar used is not specified, see the more detailed information on the differences between event dates under the "Old Style" Julian calendar versus the "New Style" Gregorian calendar, here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates 

For more detailed background on the "Bloody Sunday" St. Petersburg massacre, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1905)

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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A Very Special, Placid Place -- Those Places Thursday (October 17, 2013)

Eventually known simply as "Placid Place," Molly's parents' "nice little camp" right on Lake Placid in the Adirondack region of Upstate New York was a much-loved family get-away.  Dan and Doreen O'Kane owned Placid Place for several decades and we and our sons spent time there virtually every summer.  Both sons were dipped in the waters of Lake Placid within months of being born and they attended soccer camp at the Northwood School in Lake Placid for several summers.

In the Adirondacks, vacation homes great and small that are located outside towns or villages on lakes, rivers, or in the back woods are known not as "cottages" or "cabins," but rather as "camps."  Placid Place was originally a very small "fish camp" that was used seasonally by the original owner.  It consisted of just the right side of the structure shown above where the two sets of twin windows are seen. After Molly's parents bought the camp, the interior of the original structure was re-configured and upgraded and then later an addition to the left was added.  The deck was also expanded so that it ran the full length of the front and wrapped around to run the width of the original structure to the right so that it formed an "L" shape hugging half the camp.  

The camp sat a mere 50 feet or so from the shore of the lake where a modest, unobtrusive wooden platform nestled under the shoreline trees and from which a straight, removable dock sat out into the lake perhaps 15 -18 feet.  It was deep enough off the end of the dock that we could dive right into the lake and the water was crystal clear so that we could easily see bass down 10-12 feet.  

There were views out over the lake from every room in the front of the camp (the dining room, the kitchen, and the living room).  None of the four bedrooms had lake views, but they each looked out into the surrounding woods.  The camp had two full baths and a walk-out basement that was used mainly to store canoes, tools, a second refrigerator, and any other gear that needed a home.  The camp was a four-season camp with baseboard electric heat, a fireplace in the living room, and a cast-iron wood stove in the dining room area, so that it was used during winter holidays and for the 1980 Winter Olympics held at Lake Placid.  Placid Place was accessible by car down a private, three-mile dirt and gravel road.

Placid Place in winter on completely frozen and snow-covered Lake Placid.  The dock is out of the lake for the winter, but the wooden platform from which the dock ran out into the lake can be seen to the left.

The view from Placid Place looking west down Sunset Straight between Buck and Moose Islands

The new owners of Placid Place have added a beautifully crafted, but completely incongruous pagoda-style boathouse to the shoreline

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All photographs by the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Those Places Thursday (September 19, 2013) -- The Thankful Tew House, Newport, Rhode Island

The Thankful Tew House, Newport, Rhode Island

Just across the street from the headquarters of the Newport Historical Society in Newport, Rhode Island is the Thankful Tew House.  Thankful (Wickham) Tew was the second wife of William Tew (1782 - 1828), a 2x great grandson of Richard Tew who immigrated to America from Maidford England in 1640.  Richard is my 8th great grandfather.  William (a relative not an ancestor of mine), was the sixth of twelve children of William Tew (1745 - 1808) and his wife, Sarah Willson (1753 - 1831).

Thankful Wickham Tew was born in 1770 and died on January 5, 1839.  She was the daughter of Capt. Samuel Wickham.  William and Thankful Tew had two daughters: Charlotte S. Tew and Mary D. Tew, who later married George Sydney Partridge and had two sons (George and William) and one daughter (Charlotte Wickham Partridge).

Thankful's will, dated September 23, 1837, left to both her daughters "according to their peculiar situation and circumstances . . . the benefit and enjoyment of what little property I may leave at my decease . . . "  She further stated, "I rely with very great confidence upon the warm and affectionate love I know my children bear each to the other, to save my executor and trustee from any unpleasant and embarrassing responsibility, touching their rights under this will.  And now I commend them with all a mother's deep solicitude to the mercy and kind protection of our merciful Redeemer." 

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Photographs of the Thankful Tew Home in Newport, Rhode Island by the author (March 2010). 

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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